Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Tribute to barenforum.org

"We must, indeed, all hang together,

or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Printmaker Benjamin Franklin

Between traveling to festivals, making art, destroying my bathroom (see my facebook page), smelling the pines and all other activities that compose my very busy life, I delight in participating off and on in this rare creature we rare birds collectively call "baren". I just took great delight in catching up some of the online galleries of prints provided by the membership.

Baren or barenforum.org, is a loosely organized web-group of woodblock printmakers founded with these words: Chromoxylographers of the world - Unite! uttered by David Bull, our very energetic founding "father." His website can be seen here: http://www.woodblock.com/




See the info page here: http://barenforum.org/intro.html
Mostly we are a bunch of artist-printmakers who delight in the woodblock/woodcut process and enjoy exchanging prints. We (about 400 of us give or take at any point in time since 1999) have now exchanged prints 69 times and any one of us owns an astounding collection of more than 2,000 prints from artists all over the world.

We do this simply for the love of art, woodblock and each other. Many friendships have formed, many colleagues have come and gone, many side projects, some reunions, collaborations, exhibitions, a Facebook group, always the forum...list goes on and on.


Print Exchanges http://barenforum.org/exchange/exchanges.html

Aside from the exchange of ideas and images now taking place mostly in our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/121864389055/ 
the highlight of our happy barenforum.org group has been the exchange program. We basically sign up, we make as many prints as we have participants and we all end up with a nice portfolio of woodblock prints from all over the world. We do this stubbornly again and again since 1999, four times a year.

Some wise quotes by our members:
"Honest effort and honest communication, that's what counts;
given that, anything goes." - [Baren] member Bill Mixon 
"It's in the doing that questions are answered." - [Baren] member Phil Bivins 
"Cut! Print!" - [Baren] member Dave Bull 
"If you like doing something, isn't it better if it takes a long time?" -
[Baren] member Dave Bull 
"Jûnin Tôiro (Ten People, Ten Colours)" -
Japanese proverb 
"... I consider this discussion about ... what art is, appropriation, editioning, if digital prints are or not fine arts, the deathly sin of using a laser or any other modern tool, etc. ... a delightful waste of time." -
[Baren] member Horácio Soares Neto

Again, here are the galleries of prints, we hope you enjoy browsing:
http://barenforum.org/exchange/exchanges.html

Stay in touch!

1000woodcuts Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/1000woodcuts 
Maria's Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/maria.arango.diener 
Maria's Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/1000woodcuts 
1000woodcuts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/1000woodcuts/videos

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